Sexy Firefox 3

Let me start by saying that Firefox 3, on OSX, is a completely, entirely, different browser from Firefox 2 on OSX. It’s more responsive, it has native widgets, and a brand new theme. Considering that I (and most developer friends that I know) use Firefox – and use OSX, this should come as a much-needed respite.

Firefox 3, beta 2 was released yesterday, now is a perfect time to start playing around, testing your web sites, and getting a feel for the overall user experience of the new browser.

Here’s a couple things that you can do (specific to OSX):

Download Firefox 3.0b2 Drag it somewhere on your computer, rename it to something like “Firefox 3.0b2”, then drag it to your Applications folder so that it doesn’t overwrite your copy of Firefox 2).

Multiple Firefoxes Here is how you can run multiple versions of Firefox side-by-side, simultaneously. First, you’ll need to go to the command-line and navigate to where your Firefox is stored, and run it like this (tab auto-complete will help here):

The above is important – Firefox allows you to run multiple copies of itself, with all of its critical information stored in different profiles. Thus, once you run the above, you should get a dialog that looks like this:

You’ll, probably, only have one profile listed (I have a ton, because I’m frequently running 3-4 different versions of Firefox for testing purposes). Click the ‘Create Profile…’ button and just jump through the steps. Once completed, selected your newly created profile and hit ‘Start Firefox’. You should, now, have two copies of Firefox running side-by-side.

Now, don’t worry about running that command-line statement – the profile manager dialog will pop up every time you start Firefox, from now on (unless you tell it not to).

The Sexy New Theme Now that you’ve started Firefox 3, it’s time to install Proto (the theme that will be enabled by default on OSX, once completed). That should be a quick install/restart.

If you don’t see the theme after the restart, go to Tools > Add-ons > Themes, select Proto, and hit ‘Use Theme’. That’ll require one more restart, but then you’ll be using the nice new theme in the brand-new version of the browser.

Enjoy!

Update: Getting Firebug working on Firefox 3 Probably the most popular extension for web developers is the incredibly-cool Firebug. However, the normal Firebug extension doesn’t work in Firefox 3, right now. There’s a separate Firebug side-project called “Firebug 1.1” (which will, eventually, become the true Firebug 1.1).

It’s easy enough to get going with this extension, just go to the Firebug 1.1. Download page, install the extension, and do a quick restart. You should be good-to-go!

@Chris: I assume that the above would be nearly identical, in Windows. You would need to install Firefox 3 to a different directory from the default, then navigate to it on the command-line and run it with the -ProfileManager option. But after that, everything should be the same.

@Christopher: This is due to the fact that Firefox respects the system’s keyboard access settings (which, by default, states that you should only tab between stuff like text boxes and links). You can change this by going to “System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts” Then select “All controls” under “Full keyboard access” – and you should be good-to-go!

To change the behaviour, open System Preferences, go to the “Keyboard & Mouse” pane, select the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab, and enabled “All Controls” for Full Keyboard Access. You don’t even have to restart Firefox.

@Christopher if I recall correctly, that’s controlled by OSX in the Keyboard Preferences. Press Ctrl + F7 or go to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts tab. At the bottom of the tab, select “All controls”.

One note about Firebug. I imported my bookmarks and installed Firebug via the link above. After doing so, Firefox crashes when I “Show All Bookmarks”. Disabling Firebug stopped it from crashing.

I love the welcome screen. It would be awesome if it made it into the release version.
I am slightly disappointed that new Firefox’s search doesn’t use the new Leopard animation. I love that and it makes searching through gobs of text so much easier.

@Off: Yeah, you have to install the extension in order to get the full theme, because the theme is actually quite advanced (it requires additional pieces of functionality that can only be provided by an extension). In a lot of ways, it is like Safari – only it looks better (imo). Especially within the context of Leopard.

Thus far, I’ve been seeing good results with RAM usage. I know that there’s been definite, good, progress at reducing the amount that’s used. Let’s hope it continues in that way, throughout the betas.

John, as I read this piece a thought popped into my head: Now that Firefox is customizing to OS, will the brand suffer because it no longer stands out in uniform like it once did, or will the opposite happen as a result of user experience? Will be interesting to watch.
I just wonder how important the; “What browser are you using there?” questions are in helping drive new user adoption vs word-of-mouth. :)

@Craig: It will be interesting. Although, I think it’ll have a really positive effect on the usage of the browser. If it feels more like a true, native, application – it’ll better be able to compete with the default native browsers (IE, Safari). I’m not sure if “sticking out” or “looking the same on all platforms” has ever really worked out well for an application (even look at applications like Photoshop or Word – they’re very specialized per-platform).

– Finally, native buttons in Mac OS X!
– The URL auto-complete feels way too bulky, and actually makes it harder to find where you’ve previosly been.
– The new way the “remember password?” works. It’s impossible to tab to, as opposed to the previous way of doing it in a dialog. To me, this is not good at all.

Thanks for this. Very helpful.
I’m seeing quite high CPU usage on OSX 10.5.1 from the firefix-bi process when loading sites (around 50% on non-ajax sites and 90% on loading gmail). On a *very* benchmark measure I see around 30% for non-ajax sites and 60% for gmail for Camino.

Followed your instructions to the T… but looks like I fragged my FF2 install, when I select my default Profile from the Profile Manager FF3 loads instead of 2. Any hints on fixing this (NEED my plugins back).

@Jake & Scott: You can add an extra option to when you execute the Firefox binary from the commandline: -no-remote. Do that once for each binary and you should be able to run them both simultaneously (and allow your old one to startup as normal).

Thanks for these instructions and congrats on FF 3.0. It’s a really great step forward in browsing experience.

I upgraded in hopes that FF3 would place nicely with Gmail. The problem is with the Gmail keyboard shortcuts. I used to be able to press tab-return, and then I could send the message, but now a dialog box appears that asks if I want to abandon my changes. I thought it was a FF extension that was causing this problem, but now that I’ve installed a clean FF, it’s still not behaving as expected.

Do you know what is causing this to not work, and if there is any workaround? I really want to use gmail without having to touch the mouse!

Heya John! I need to beta-test the clipmarks add-on with firefox b3 on mac tomorrow so this post caught my eye, and then I realized it was your site! Very cool to run across your stuff again now, considering I’m also working on putting together BarCampNYC3 as we speak.

The only real missing piece that I see, not being an expert on Firefox, is that there is an ietabs plugin, that apparently does not work in beta three either yet. But, my really problem with that is it wont work on a mac anyway. OK

I’ve been using this FF3v3b for over a week now on a daily basis within a wide variety of browsing situations, and I have to say, this is the closest I’ve ever seen a beta feel like a finished piece of software. (For the record: Mac/PPC/10.4.9) I really like the smoothness overall, the outstanding, clear page scaling and the very sharp looking GUI. Sweet! This has become my browser of first choice — beta and all(!!)

Anyone else getting constant crashes in beta 4 (OS X Leopard)? Almost every fourth page I load crashes the browser. I followed the above instructions and I’m running under a separate user profile than my Firefox 2 instance and don’t have any plug-ins installed. This better not be a sign of things to come. Firefox 2 is buggy enough.